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Bug Fixesv1.19.5

v1.19.5 — The free Reference Checker gets a lot more honest

The public Reference Checker no longer flags real books and websites as "possibly fabricated," no longer links to dead DOIs, and now finds famous papers it used to miss — plus a redesigned results view. Also: the site nav finally lists all nine free tools instead of five, and links to /scales/[slug] now unfurl with the actual instrument name instead of a generic homepage card.

F

Folio Team

August 4, 2026 2 min read

On this page

  • Fixed
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Fixed

  • The Reference Checker could call a real book or website "possibly fabricated." It only ever searched CrossRef and OpenAlex, which cover journal articles — a real, findable book or website had nowhere to match and came back looking suspicious. It now recognizes what kind of source it's looking at: websites get an honest "we verify scholarly literature, not web pages" instead of a fabrication flag, and books are checked against OpenLibrary. A citation that's just too bare to check confidently now says so plainly, rather than getting lumped in with actually-fabricated references.
  • A famous, real paper could come back "not found." Pasting in "Attention Is All You Need" — the transformer paper — returned not-found, because the checker searched using the entire citation string (authors, journal, page numbers and all), which is noisy enough that an unrelated paper could outrank the real one. It now extracts the title first and searches on that.
  • Some verified references linked to a dead page. OpenAlex occasionally attaches a broken DOI to an otherwise-real paper. Those links are now checked before they're shown, and dropped rather than sending you to a 404.
  • The results view was hard to read, and the loading button was briefly invisible. Checking a list now shows a live "Checking N references…" status with placeholder cards while it works, and each result renders as a calm, icon-led card with a clear verdict — reserving a strong red highlight for the one case that should actually alarm you: a retracted paper.
  • The site's Tools menu only listed five of Folio's nine free tools. Word Counter, APA Statistics, Forest Plot, Sample Size Calculator, and CONSORT Diagram were live but not linked from the nav — findable only if you already knew the URL. All nine now show, with a link to the full tools hub.
  • Sharing a /scales/[slug] link (e.g. the PSS-10 or Beck Anxiety Inventory page) previewed as a generic Folio homepage card. Every scale looked identical when shared on social or pasted into a chat. Each scale page now generates its own preview card naming the instrument, its field, and a few key facts (item count, subscales, reliability).

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